“That’d be nice.” The irony was ladled on. I stood aside and let him in.

Sylvie gave him a weary top-to-toe look.

“Got in the life-raft launcher,” Lazlo announced. “Couple of bypass jolts and a seven-metre crawl up a polished steel chimney. Nothing to it.”

Sylvie sighed. “It’s not big, Las, it’s not clever and some day you’ll miss the fucking boat. What are we going to do for a lead then?”

“Well, looks to me like you’re already lining up replacements.” A cocked glance in my direction. “Who is this, exactly?”

“Micky, Lazlo.” An idle gesture back and forth between us. “Lazlo, meet Micky Serendipity. Temporary travelling companion.”

“Did you get him aboard with my flashes?”

Sylvie shrugged. “You never use them.”

Lazlo spotted Jadwiga’s form on the bed and a grin lit up his bony face.

He strode across the cabin and slapped her on one buttock. When she didn’t respond, he frowned. I shut the door.

“Jesus, what did she take last night?”

“She’s dead, Las.”

“Dead?

“For the moment, yes.” Sylvie looked across at me. “You’ve missed rather a lot of the dance since yesterday.”

Lazlo’s eyes followed Sylvie’s gaze across the cabin. “And it all has something to do with tall, dark and synthetic there, right?”

“Right,” I said. “Like I said, it’s a long story.”

Lazlo went across to the basin niche and ran water into his cupped hands. He lowered his face into the water and snorted. Then he wiped the surplus water back through his hair, straightened up and eyed me in the mirror. He turned pointedly towards Sylvie.

“Alright, skipper. I’m listening.”

SIX

It took a day and a night to get to Drava.

From about midway across the Andrassy Sea, Guns for Guevara ran throttled back, sensor net spread as wide as it would go, weapons systems at standby. The official line from the Mecsek government was that the mimints had all been designed for a land war and so had no way of getting off New Hok. On the ground, deCom crews reported seeing machines there were no descriptors for in the Military Machine Intelligence archive, which suggested at least some of the weaponry still prowling the continent had found ways to evolve beyond its original programme parameters. The whispered word was that experimental nanotech had run wild. The official line said nanotech systems were too crude and too poorly understood at the time of the Unsettlement to have been deployed as weapons. The whispered word was dismissed as anti-government scaremongering, the official line was derided in every place you could find intelligent conversation.

Without satellite cover or aerial support, there was no way to prove the thing either way. Myth and misinformation reigned.

Welcome to Harlan’s World.